General principles regarding the use of adult stem cells

With only a few, almost inevitable exceptions, biomedical research has developed within the last 50 years under the tutelage of ethical standards of notable precision. In the vast world of scientific investigation, few disciplines can boast of having realized documents of such ethical rigour, and respect for the integrity and intrinsic value of the human person has been one of the cardinal principles of the researcher. Research is intrinsic to the medical profession; the reward of research is knowledge and its techniques are ordered towards maintenance of human health. Since this end concerns human beings, it demands an extremely rigorous ethical approach. Ethical aspects are present from the first moments of the experimental project and occur on three levels: choice of the objectives, selection and use of the appropriate means for the study, and application of resultant new discoveries. Today, our moral attention cannot be reduced to a cost-benefit analysis. Biomedical sciences and medicine have overlapping areas of interest that can be sources of tension: the good of the subject versus scientific utility; profit versus complexity of research; liberty versus ethical and juridical bonds; the public versus the private; and the individual versus the community. Here, I attempt to formulate some essential principles that should guarantee humane measures for research on humans.